


Secret Santas Sneaking Stealthily in Stunticon Spaces

by DinobotGlitch



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Domestic Fluff, Gen, Humor, Team as Family, they're all just doing their best okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 13:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13295427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinobotGlitch/pseuds/DinobotGlitch
Summary: The Stunticons discover the joy of Christmas... kind of.





	Secret Santas Sneaking Stealthily in Stunticon Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is for Miisa on tumblr as my part in the secretsolenoid event! I hope you like it, dear, so sorry that it's late!

‘This wasn’t here when I left last night.’

The bemused thought ran across Wildrider’s processor unbidden as he grazed the panel to light up the Stunticon common room, and he was nearly blinded by an entire rainbow of little lights flickering into existence right where their big couch used to be. 

His instinctive reaction to something he didn’t recognize was to attack, but a rare moment of rational thought (and, admittedly, a fair amount of exhaustion) stayed his hand at the last second. What if it belonged to one of his brothers?

After his optics adjusted he could discern _what_ he was looking at with a little more clarity, however, he couldn’t help but find the notion just a bit ridiculous. He couldn’t think of a single reason that any of them would want something so blatantly organic and- and smelly. Whew, it _reeked_! How had he missed that when he opened the door?

He was smart enough to know that that didn’t mean that there wasn’t a reason, of course. Everyone said he was the most unhinged and oblivious member of the team, but he had his doubts sometimes. He muted the sensory information from his olfactory system before his processor started to fritz, and decided that this might just be one of those times. Destroying this thing would be doing them all a favor!

He didn’t do it, because he actually liked the other Stunticons, and knew that one good turn deserved another; they put up with his antics on a daily basis, so he could at least hear the guilty party out. He’d ask them just why they had thought this was something to bring into their shared living space without warning _before_ he obliterated it.

If he was being completely honest though, he refrained mostly because he didn’t want to deal with Motormaster’s lecture and the inevitable punishment for breaking something that wasn’t his. Again.

He pinged everyone sans the truck-former - because if it was his, then everyone would already know it - to his location, and then rounded the bundle of flora to have a real look at it while he waited.

There wasn’t much to be said for it, really, aside from it being almost as colorful and obnoxious as a Seeker’s personality. It was tall for an organic thing and richly scented with the woody, vaguely rotting aroma of Earthian nature. Someone had taken great care to wrap a thin strand of miniscule lights over its many branches, going round and round and round the thing until it reached the top, upon which sat a single bright gold star no larger than the pad of his thumb; where the lights were not, a multitude of baubles and all manner of glittery bits and bobs clung.

It was so flamboyant and gaudy that it could really only belong to Drag Strip, surely…? But it was put together with the kind of careful consideration of one such as Breakdown or Dead End - not that the latter was possible, of course, since Dead End had been out with him all night.

So who could have put it there?

A quick check of the door showed no signs of tampering, which meant that whoever had brought it in had ready access to their rooms. That was an admittedly large number of mechs, he had to concede to himself. Privacy on the _Nemesis_ was hard to come by at the best of times, even a space that was nominally theirs. 

Perplexed silence reigned as Drag Strip shuffled sleepily out of his room, followed closely by a significantly more alert-looking Breakdown, who proceeded to join him in staring at the monstrosity.

Neither of them looked particularly guilty, but Wildrider wasn’t about to be fooled. He’d been on patrol - more or less, anyway, since it was less like patrolling and more like ‘get out of the base and maybe shoot an Autobot if you just so happen to see one’ - all night, and therefore had no way of doing all this even if he wanted to. 

Since Dead End had been with him up until just a few minutes ago - where they had parted ways so the pessimistic mech could fetch their rations - he was also out, and no one in their right mind would accuse Motormaster of doing anything for something as frivolous as “fun”, at least not if they wanted to live. Given all of that, and seeing as he was reasonably sure that no other Decepticon thought them worth the time and effort to prank so extravagantly, there were really only two options, and they were both right in front of him.

Dead End seemed to reach the same conclusion (albeit much quicker than Wildrider had) when he arrived a couple of minutes later, though he showed very little outward sign as he stood in the doorway of the common room and surveyed its contents.

Finally, Breakdown seemed to realize that no one else was going to say anything, so he broke the silence himself. He hated talking, but he hated the silence even more.

“I don’t like it. What if it has cameras hidden in it?” Blue hands wrung together as their owner’s voice, tumultuous at the best of times, reached a new, horrifically anxious pitch when three sets of optics turned to look at him. “Every one of those little lights could be a device used to spy on us. They could be looking at me right now!”

A haughty huff from the mech on his right had Breakdown shying away instinctively and looking like he wished he had just kept his fool mouth shut after all, though there was nowhere to go since he had so, so stupidly slid between Drag Strip and the wall furthest from the door to get a look at what they’d been summoned for. With Drag Strip’s gaze locked firmly onto himself, Breakdown was suddenly much more concerned with the nearby threats to his person than he was with the ones on the other side of a surveillance camera feed.

“ _I’m_ looking at you right now,” Drag Strip snapped, though he made no effort to appear physically intimidating, “and all I can see is a whiny little protoform, not someone powerful enough to be worth spying on.”

“Hey-!”

Either they were really good at faking it, or Wildrider was going to need to reevaluate the possible list of suspects. His processor was starting to hurt a little bit.

Dead End - who still had not bothered to fully cross the threshold - sighed wearily and leaned on the doorjamb. His arms were full of energon cubes, but they were mostly forgotten as he shook his head.

“It’s much more likely that it’s a bomb. It’ll explode any minute, and we’ll all be dead.”

“Yeah, right,” Wildrider scoffed from where he had knelt to get a closer look at one of the little baubles. Was that a word printed onto it? “As if it could get past our forcefields? Everyone else on the ship will be dead, probably, but we won’t be.”

“Megatron will kill us if he dies,” Breakdown pointed out in a tone that suggested that he felt he was speaking quite reasonably.

“Don’t be stupid,” Drag Strip snapped again. He was growing increasingly annoyed; a morning person, he was not. “He can’t kill anyone if he’s dead.”

“Have you _met_ Megatron?” Breakdown demanded to know, which only set Drag Strip off that last little bit necessary for him to round on the shorter, bulkier mech with a glare that could implode a sun.

“Um, yeah, _duh_ , you di-”

Luckily, Drag Strip didn’t get further than that; he was cut off prematurely by a staticky growl that could make even the toughest mech falter.

“What the frag is going on out here?”

All commotion ceased instantly. Four heads whipped around to stare at the shrouded visage down the short hallway that divided up their sleeping quarters, and no one answered as sluggish footsteps thudded toward them- not even when the figure resolved itself into the perpetually sleep-deprived form of their leader.

This didn’t go over well, as one might expect during such circumstances. Large arms were crossed over an equally large chest, and Motormaster scowled down at all of them. Almost without pause, his sharpening gaze moved beyond them to the sickening organic monstrosity tucked into the corner of the already too-crowded common room.

“What the _frag_ is that.”

“Uh…” answered Wildrider succinctly. Being the one closest to the source of the problem, Motormaster had automatically locked onto him, and he was feeling the burn of that crimson gaze - like the white-hot heat wave of the Pits - on his already weary shoulders. Aw, frag…

“It’s not my fault,” he said after a short delay; he was unsure of most things, but very certain that it was important to make that distinction right then.

Motormaster didn’t look like he was buying it, much to his dismay, but it was the truth! Wildrider launched into as best an explanation for his own whereabouts as he could manage, gesturing animatedly to get his point across as if that alone would get his aft out of the trouble it was about to be in.

He and Dead End had done their rounds like usual, he explained, and then he had begged the fatalistic speedster to have a race down an abandoned stretch of highway before they were due to check back in at base. It was a simple enough excursion-with-slight-detour, nothing out of the ordinary for one with as much energy as Wildrider contained. It was as solid of an alibi as anyone could hope for.

That meant nothing now though, because if Motormaster could somehow peg this on him to get the situation resolved quickly, he was damn well going to, and they both knew it. He didn’t care how much begging and bribing Wildrider had been forced to do to get Dead End to race with him, or how nothing else seemed out of place; he just wanted to know why there was organic garbage stinking up what little space they could call their own, and his glare told Wildrider - who had just confessed to being the one who discovered it - that he had _better_ come up with a better explanation quick.

It was just unfortunate, then, that after some floundering - while all of his brothers made themselves comfortable on the one remaining couch to watch the oncoming show - Wildrider realized he had nothing better to add. None of them had gotten a warning about tampering, so the door had been unlocked and then relocked with the proper codes. This, presumably, was how the interloper had delivered his bedazzled burden, and it left no trail to follow even if they were to go to Soundwave with a complaint. He had very little with which to soothe Motormaster’s ire.

And after he had finally trailed off, Motormaster just kept staring at him, his gaze somewhere between disgruntled and zoned out. It was like he was looking at Wildrider under a lens and couldn’t quite fathom him, but also like he was about to pass out where he stood as his initial irritation at being disturbed faded. Maybe - hopefully? - that meant that the Stunticon leader wasn’t quite sure if he was worth the effort, and it gave Wildrider some extra time to think up either an explanation or figure out an escape route until this all blew over.

“You know what? I think I actually know what this is,” Breakdown said quietly after several beats of the ensuing silence.

No one turned to look at him - a small favor, but a favor nonetheless - before Motormaster grunted for him to get on with it already. He was obviously still trying to figure out how to proceed, although curiosity was getting the better of him at last. He was already inching closer to have a better look.

“It’s a tree- no, no, it’s a _special_ tree!” Breakdown explained, the last few words rushing out before anyone could do more than physically bristle. “It’s for a, uh, a holiday that the humans celebrate in this country. It took me a minute to place it, but I’ve definitely seen these before. They have them all over town. I even saw one in one of their living units!”

That, at least, roused an iota of genuine interest in their leader. It stalled him long enough that Wildrider could shuffle out of his way before he was within arm’s reach - without appearing too suspicious, at least, which was more than he could have hoped for.

Still, Motormaster couldn’t have possibly sounded more unimpressed than he did currently as he asked, “Why, pray tell, would they want to bring one of these disgusting things into their home?” though.

That made Breakdown falter, if only for a moment. “Well, I- uh, that is- I… don’t know? It’s organic nonsense, they probably do it just because they can.”

“Hmm. And it looked like this one, with all that…” Motormaster’s hands gestured vaguely at the paraphernalia that covered the tree from top to bottom. “Stuff?”

“Yeah, uh. Yeah. I think so. It had the lights, at least.”

“Sounds dumb.”

“Yeah.”

There was more silence, in which Wildrider scooted further out of Motormaster’s line of sight. If he could just round the tree, he could slip into the hallway and the unspoken but respected safety of his room… 

Then Motormaster had the audacity to ask a question that drew them all up short.

“What about the boxes?”

“Huh?”

“The _boxes_ , Breakdown. The ones under the tree. Were there boxes under the other trees, too?”

Breakdown frowned, and then decided to take a turn at studying the tree more closely since Wildrider was now well out of the way. He approached it - ignoring Drag Strip’s sleepy grumbling when the other mech was dislodged from his shoulder - to look underneath where there were, in fact, several boxes tucked neatly in a row.

“Oh. Yeah, some of them? The one in the town square didn’t have any though…”

“Hmm.”

And the silence resumed.

Wildrider, thinking he may have gotten out of the hot seat at least, finally stood up and announced a little too casually, “Alright, well, I’m gonna go to my room and have a nap then.”

Immediately, a chorus of complaints sounded. No one said it, but he knew that tone. If he left, then someone else was going to be forced to take the blame! Surprisingly though, the loudest was from Motormaster himself.

“You’re not going anywhere until we figure out what to do with this!”

“Throw it away for all I care,” the hyperactive speedster whined, shoulders slumping. “This is boring and I’m tired!”

“Maybe I wanna shove it up your tailpipe, yeah?” Motormaster mock-growled, and made as if to follow after him as he hastily jumped over Breakdown to get to his room. Blessedly, the truck-former paused halfway through completing his bid to grab Wildrider, because he was nowhere near as nimble as his speedster subordinates and he knew it. There would be no clearing Breakdown for a mech his size - not without casualties. 

Breakdown didn’t even notice him approaching though, so preoccupied was he, and Motormaster frowned anew when he realized that.

That prompted everyone else to look at Breakdown, too, helms tilted curiously at the other’s unusual inattentiveness.

“What’re you lookin’ at?” Motormaster asked when Breakdown picked up one of the sparkly packages that had sat tucked beneath the tree. To his surprise, Breakdown forewent his usual theatrics at being acknowledged in favor of shrugging somewhat uselessly and holding out the box to him.

“It’s got your name on it.”

That piqued everyone’s interest, and any grumbling they may have done was fast bypassed in favor of suspicion.

“Why’s his name on it?” Drag Strip demanded to know from where he had taken up residence half in Dead End’s lap.

Before Breakdown could answer, Dead End piped up with, “Is his name on all of them?”

“Maybe someone’s trying to hook up-” Wildrider suggested with a darkly delighted cackle, unable to help but prod the bee’s nest while Motormaster was too distracted with taking and examining the brightly colored package.

Drag Strip stiffened, hissing, “Don’t even say that-”

“- remember what happened _last_ time someone tried-?” Breakdown bemoaned, a bit of his normal anxiety returning at the mere mention of that incident.

Dead End, the only voice of reason in all the land, petted Drag Strip’s helm while he mumbled, “I sincerely doubt it- not if they value their lives at all.”

“Yeah, but…” Breakdown gesticulated, the motion coming off as almost unbearably stressed. “You know who you’re talking about, right?”

They all took a moment to consider the mental state of the Decepticons as a whole, and shared a nearly simultaneous full-body shiver. Decepticons had some _serious_ issues to work out as a whole and as individuals.

Motormaster pushed the topic aside in his typical fashion, and flipped open the tag on the package addressed to him, reading it aloud.

“‘Merry Christmas, from Santa and all of his elves’… What are ‘elves’?” he asked, glancing at Wildrider. Why, Wildrider couldn’t fathom. Why was Motormaster so set on him being in the know about all this mess?

He shrugged in return. “Dunno. What’s Christmas?”

“Why is it merry?” Dead End asked. “Can’t be too fraggin’ happy if part of it involves putting out entire dying plants as a centerpiece.”

“Yeah, and who is Santa? That’s a dumb name, first of all, and he should be ashamed of himself for keeping it,” Drag Strip put in, just to keep the gripe train rolling.

“It was made by humans, of course it’s dumb,” Breakdown pointed out. “More importantly, though… what’s in the box? Should we even open it? What if it _is_ a bomb…?”

That _was_ the question, wasn’t it? All optics turned to Motormaster, who shrugged and ripped the paper and ribbon off the container without much fanfare. The colorful debris fluttered to the ground silently as he pulled back the flaps of the leftover packaging to peer inside.

He said absolutely nothing during all of this, and kept the box well above optic level for any of the others to peer in as he messed about in it.

Wildrider was practically vibrating where he stood, knowing full well that if he tried to jump on his superior to see what he was rummaging around for, he’d get knocked into next week. That didn’t mean he wasn’t craning his neck as far as it would go!

“C’mon, what is it already?” he whined. He was feeling much more awake with something interesting to focus on, and it showed.

“A big ol’ can of None of Your Business,” Motormaster grumbled halfheartedly as he finished sorting out the contents and withdrew a tiny, foil wrapped block - an energon treat, everyone noticed with visible envy. Treats? Who had time to make junk fuel in the middle of a war? And for Motormaster, at that!

The suggestion that someone was trying to get on his good side didn’t seem so far fetched, suddenly.

Ignoring the hungry whines of the others, Motormaster ate it thoughtfully while perusing the other contents with much more interest than he had expressed initially. That was as close to a compliment as anything ever got with Motormaster, and the envy increased tenfold, to the point that Drag Strip actually dragged himself off the couch to go look under the tree.

“What if they’re all treats, and we’ve just been sitting here like morons when we could have been eating them?” he asked in response to Breakdown’s inquiring chirp. “Smogbreath isn’t gonna share-”

“-Damn right, I won’t-!”

“-so I’m just gonna find my own! One of these packages is bound to have my name on it!”

The words were barely out of his mouth before he had located it: a dark red package with a matching bow, and his name in elegant print on a large sticker on top. He crowed in triumph as he shredded the paper and fumbled with the bindings on the elongated box, barely even flinching when most of Wildrider’s weight settled on his hunched shoulders a moment later.

His hands stilled once he got the mystery box open, however, and his suborbital ridges furrowed together.

“I got… myself?” Drag Strip said, sounding disappointed and confused. He pulled a near identical replica of his alt mode out of the box and set it on the floor dejectedly. He already knew what he looked like; he didn’t need some weird model to remind him, even if he _was_ good looking. He wanted goodies! 

“Hang on, there’s a little black thing, too,” Wildrider reached in to grab it when Drag Strip set the box aside, turning it one way and then the other to get a good look at it. Off-white print on the top of it caught his optic and he hummed. “It says ‘R/C’... what’s that mean?”

“It looks kinda like the controls for a shuttle, doesn’t it? Not as many buttons and knobs though,” Motormaster leaned over to look at it, then flicked the switch near the top that read ON/OFF. 

A tiny red light blinked into existence above it, and Wildrider’s idle fiddling with the aforementioned apparati triggered a response in Drag Strip’s downsized replica, causing it to whirr loudly and go skidding in reverse until it ran into Motormaster’s foot.

The gold and violet Stunticon perked up instantly. “Oh!”

“Neat,” Wildrider giggled. “Guess R/C probably stands for ‘remote controlled’, huh…?”

“Guess so! Gimme, gimme, it’s mine!”

Wildrider pretended to think about it, but Drag Strip wasn’t about to give him time to do anything nefarious; he snatched the controller away and shook his brother off with a warning growl before bending over the controls to figure out what they all did. 

“So does that mean we all got something?” he asked Breakdown, nodding toward the rest of the pile.

“Oh, uh… W-well, this one’s for Dead End…” Breakdown held out the next bundle - a squishy one, unlike the others so far - for someone else to pass on to the pessimist. He was reaching for another as soon as it was out of his hands, and chirped in delight when he found that it bore his own name. He set it aside momentarily to grab the last one, and didn’t even bother to read out the tag before giving it over into Wildrider’s excitedly grabbing hands.

“Looks like we all got something for, uh… Christmist?”

“Christmaaas, Breakdown,” Drag Strip corrected primly, though most of his focus was on trying valiantly to get his new toy to pop a wheelie.

“What’s it matter t’you what it’s called?” Wildrider teased as he peeled back the layers of paper to see what he got. Drag Strip shrugged nonchalantly.

“May as well remember it for future reference. Whatever the frag it is, it means surprise gifts, and I’m all for that.”

“Even if you don’t know where they came from?” Breakdown asked dubiously.

In response, Drag Strip deadpanned, “What other kind of surprise gifts are there?”

“Uh…”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. If some stupid fleshie wants to sneak in here and give us free stuff, I’m not gonna complain about it.”

“That’s a totally fair and reasonable way of thinking,” Wildrider commended playfully as he took a seat with his own gift safely tucked in his lap. He normally wouldn’t bother with such pleasantries, but by doing so, he could pry it open without fear of dropping it. It was rather heavy, after all. “It’s pretty unusual for you to think that way. Is Dead End feeding you lines through your comm. link again?”

“Wow, rude? I can’t believe you’d even ask something like that!” Drag Strip exclaimed, dropping his controller and putting on a dramatically aghast expression. He even put his hand over his fragging spark and everything, prompting giggles from both Wildrider and Breakdown. The real icing on the cake, however, came when he finished off with, “Dead End is much too busy for a pleb like me. I had to think up that one on my own, thanks very much!”

“What? No way. And you’re gonna call _me_ rude, but let this slight pass uncontested?”

Drag Strip clicked a couple of times, seeming to consider that. “You know what? You’re absolutely right. Hey, Dead End! Why aren’t you my primary processor?”

“Because that’s been dead for a long time, and I am unfortunately still here to deal with your shenanigans,” Dead End answered without missing a beat. Even Motormaster couldn’t stop himself from snorting, nearly dropping a couple of treats he had been deliberating on in the process, but Drag Strip wasn’t going to be deterred.

“You wanna replace it?”

“Not particularly, no.”

Snickers turned to outright laughter, and Wildrider attributed Drag Strip’s good humor to the unexpected windfall of gifts. He gestured uselessly to the lot of them before turning back to to pout at Wildrider.

“Can you believe it? He’s always talking about dying, but you don’t see him jumping at the opportunity even though he knows what I did to my last processor… Ridiculous. What’s a mech gotta do around here for a respectable ending?”

Wildrider’s grin was positively lewd, and he turned away from working his mystery gift out of its package to give his brother his full attention, as well as a wink of his visor. “Oh, I think you know.”

To his credit, Drag Strip only giggled a little before shoving him and waving a scolding finger in his direction. “Shuddap. You’re not help at all, I swear. Dead End?”

“Don’t wear such a garish paint job and I may reconsider,” the mech replied. He didn’t even deign to look at them; he was examining something organic - some type of fabric, maybe? - as it spilled out over his hands from the punctured packaging of his present.

The gasp of affront this time was only half faked.

“Ooh- no, no, no! In that case, you’ve missed out on your chance, door stopper. I’m gonna find someone else to reformat into a processor, and I’m gonna let them drive me right into a concrete slab a mile thick, killing us both instantly.”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll die before you can even find someone willing to help you drive in a straight line, so I don’t know why you’re trying to use that against me. But can I have your room after you die?”

“Uh, _no_. I’d give it to _Breakdown_ before I gave it to you!”

“Breakdown would give it to me if I asked him though.”

Wildrider decided to tune them out after that, because he knew from experience that the debate was only just getting started. Their bickering became little more than pleasant background noise as he focused instead on attempting to get his own gift out, though it certainly didn’t seem to help. It was like grinding rubber on rubber - the damn thing was well and truly stuck!

Huffing, he pushed it aside for the moment. He’d get Drag Strip to help him, he figured, but before that, it wouldn’t hurt to see what the others got, right?

Dead End, still in the midst of some witty comeback, looked completely deadpan as he studied what he had been given. He showed no overt emotion at all as he unraveled the long, dense bundle of organic material, but his brothers knew him too well; if he was even deigning to touch it, he surely liked it a little bit. That seemed to be the point of these gifts, actually… Motormaster was notorious for his sweet cravings, and Drag Strip was vain and fun loving. But what would Dead End do with some scrap of fabric?

As it turned out, it seemed he intended to wear it. Once he had it straightened out he wrapped it around his shoulders, and then looped the thing several times loosely around his neck. It matched his colors perfectly - though it was too soft-hued to be called glossy - and it was apparently soft enough that he didn’t mind rubbing his face on it after a moment of consternation. Huh…

Breakdown, meanwhile had very carefully and deliberately peeled open his present like the petals of a flower to reveal an assortment of idle-hands puzzles. Assistive tools if he had ever seen any - kind of ironic, since Breakdown looked nervous simply touching them. He couldn’t help but feel a bit of a panic coming on when anything new or unexpected happened.

Motormaster was already sitting beside Breakdown to help him through it, so Wildrider left it alone. Motormaster was too big and dominating to be beat out in terms of presence by a little _anxiety_ over something that Breakdown obviously wanted to enjoy, so any potential episode would be short lived.

Drag Strip must have also noticed, and he addressed Wildrider just a little too loudly..

“What’s the matter, ‘Rider? Don’t like yours?”

“Eh?” Wildrider asked, momentarily taken aback at the address. “Nah, it’s just stuck worse than when you spin out and your brakes freeze.”

“What? Here, lemme see-”

Drag Strip reached for the back end of the box and gave it a slight shake. The contents barely shifted.

“Grab that end and give it a tug. It’s not like it’s glued in or anythin’.”

“I was about to ask- hey, wait, not so quick- let me get a grip on it first!”

After a fumble and a couple of choice curses, they managed to grasp their parts and pull. Once, twice, three times, and finally, the device - and it _was_ a device, and a sorely missed one at that - came free.

“A holoprojector?” Drag Strip squeaked. He wasn’t the only one shocked, either. Who wouldn’t be surprised to see one of these relics? “Do you think it works?”

“I dunno? It’s not like I have any files to test it with… Slag. It looks like it’s in perfect condition though.”

It really did. It looked… well, quite frankly, it looked _new_. But that was impossible, wasn’t it? Nobody made stuff like this anymore. Wildrider bit his derma thoughtfully as he wondered yet again what the meaning of all of this was.

“Hey. There’s still one more box under the tree,” Dead End commented idly, cutting into the conversation casually.

“Huh? Is there?”

Wildrider, eager to distract himself from his disappointment, grabbed it before Breakdown could, trilling in curiosity. Wordless though it was, the meaning was conveyed clearly; they had all gotten a present apiece already- why would there be an extra? 

Flipping open the label didn’t reveal any of their names, however. Rather, in the same elegant scrawl as all the others, it was addressed to the entire Stunticon team. 

“… Do you think it’s for Menasor?” Breakdown asked nervously.

“What kind of dumb-” Drag Strip started to snap, but Wildrider cut him off almost immediately.

“I’m opening it before y’all drag this out for three hours and Breaky has a _real_ panic attack,” he said, and he ripped the paper off with a single swift yank before anyone could stop him. 

Unlike the other gifts, this one was readily visible the second the paper was removed; a squat case of labeled holo discs glittered brightly under the multicolor lights, and all five mechs stared at them hungrily. Wildrider peeled the first one off the top of the stack to read it’s label without prompting.

“‘A Christmas Story’… Oh. Uh… You mechs wanna watch a, uh, Christmas holo?”

“Tomorrow’s rations says it’s some human production,” Drag Strip said, but he was dragging over the projector all the same. Some stupid fleshies weren’t about to stop _him_ from enjoying a holo for the first time in what felt like a lifetime!

“Nobody’s gonna take that bet and you damn well know it,” Motormaster growled at him. When Wildrider hesitated before putting the disk in, however, he gestured impatiently with one hand-pulling Breakdown up with him to head for the couch. “Hurry up then, let’s see it. Dead End, where’d you put our fuel?” 

“On the counter- I’ll get it.”

They still didn’t understand what Christmas was - even after the first holo - but they did spend the whole day watching one film after another. Turned out humans could actually be pretty funny… And watching Dead End or Motormaster perform dramatic reenactments in real time was worth everything else.

They never did figure out who sent them though…


End file.
